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Costlier oil an opportunity

(China Daily)
Updated: 2008-06-25 07:20

The fuel price hike can be deemed a great opportunity to boost energy saving, says an article in Beijing News. The following is an excerpt:

Last week, the National Development and Reform Commission raised retail fuel price. In the past, our country had long been offering subsidies to keep fuel prices at low levels, which partly fueled continuous high oil consumption in China. According to reports, the sales of high-emission SUVs kept rising for three years while they plummeted in other countries due to high oil prices. Now, the government has brought the oil prices back to track, letting prices of resources truly reflect their values, which can obviously curb the consumption of oils and raise the efficiency. It is a wise strategy adopted by China to cope with the era of high oil prices.

It is not only a measure adopted by the government under the pressure of soaring international oil prices, but also can be deemed an opportunity for governments at different levels to advance energy-saving and resources management. The government can use this chance to launch a publicity campaign to promote the energy-saving culture.

About 30 years ago, Japan was faced with an energy crisis. This island country did not treat the crisis passively, but turned the energy crisis into a golden opportunity for the country to improve its national economic competitive edge. From that time on, the country started to conserve energies and a series of environmental protection policies were adopted by the government. With these measures in place, Japan has greatly lifted its efficiency of energy consumption and become a world role model. Now soaring oil prices have few negative impacts on Japan's economy. On the contrary, the low resources consumption model established by Japan in previous years has fueled Japanese enterprises and made them more competitive in the era of high oil prices. The popular, low oil-consuming cars manufactured by Japan are a good example.

We should use the lever of price to add costs to those individuals and enterprises that waste energies. To reach this aim, we can adopt a progressive charging system for using resources, which means high taxes should be levied on luxury goods with high energy consumption.

Government vehicles, which are large in number, have high emissions and are most frequently used on roads, are one of the major pushers for domestic oil consumption. Therefore, a strict system should be put in place to curb their use.

This round of resource price hike may bring some pressure to consumers. But this pressure can be turned into a driving force to encourage the nation to save energies.

(China Daily 06/25/2008 page8)